Instead of whining about a tech-talent shortage while watching
their mountains of cash grow ever higher, why don't these big
tech companies do something about it?

Specifically, why don't they invest some of their extra cash in
educating and training more engineers?

The companies could do this in several different ways.

Before we get to those ways, however, let's review how much extra
cash these companies have. We'll look at just five of the top
tech companies--Apple, Google, Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM. There
are plenty of others out there.

APPLECash: $156 billionAnnual operating profit: $55 billion

GOOGLECash: $54 billionAnnual operating profit: $13 billion

CISCOCash: $51 billionAnnual operating profit: $10
billion

MICROSOFTCash: $85 billionAnnual operating profit: $22
billion

IBMCash: $29 billionAnnual operating profit: $22
billion

Add all that up, and here's what you get (for these five
companies alone):

TOTAL
Cash: $375 billionAnnual operating profit: $122 billion

That's a lot of money!

And instead of just letting that money just sit around
earning nothing in their bank accounts, the companies could
invest it in ways that would help their businesses, their
shareholders, the economy, and the country.

Most of the companies above already have venture-capital arms.
They could each take an additional $500 million or $1 billion
apiece and dedicate it to investing in companies that are focused
on the engineering-education problem.

2. Create formal, multi-year, in-house technology
training schools.

Each of the companies could allocate, say, $1 billion a
year to building and funding what would amount to in-house
universities. These schools--Apple University, Google
University--could take promising undergrads and teach them
everything they would learn at an excellent engineering school.
The schools could hire great teachers and have some of their own
employees teach courses. They could educate students for free, in
exchange for multi-year work commitments (similar to the armed
forces), or they could pay them a modest stipend or even charge
tuition. Unlike actual universities, which often devote much of
their curricula to theory or out-of-date skills, these in-house
programs could focus on what the companies needed now and in the
future.

The operating budget for an excellent engineering school
like Caltech is about $500 million a
year (the affiliated Jet Propulsion Laboratory costs another
$1.5 billion). Caltech's freshman class every year is about 250
students. If each of the companies above spent $1 billion a year,
they could educate and train classes of ~500 students per
year.

3. Donate funds to help create new independent
engineering schools.

Most private universities are founded on the backs of
donations from rich benefactors--corporations and individuals. In
addition to the fantastically wealthy corporations listed above,
Silicon Valley is chock full of billionaires and
centi-millionaires who have earned their fortunes on the strength
of engineering talent. So, some of these folks could help
increase the supply of future engineering talent by founding new
universities dedicated to engineering.

Caltech, which was recently voted
the best engineering school in the country, has an endowment
of only $1.8 billion. If each of the companies above donated $1
billion, and then committed to making additional donations for
5-10 years, a major new endowed engineering university or two
could be launched. These schools could churn out hundreds of
top-notch engineers every year.

People don't start universities very often, and it takes a
long time for a new school to build up the reputation, prestige,
and alumni network of an established one. But money helps. As
does branding. And it's not hard to imagine that, in 30 years, a
Page University or Bezos Technology Institute could be every bit
as prestigious as, say, Carnegie Mellon (which, of course, was
founded in an earlier technology boom, by steel mogul Andrew
Carnegie.)

The Bottom Line

Silicon Valley prides itself on its ability to solve
problems and change the world.

Unlike some of the other problems that Silicon Valley is
trying to solve, this one is relatively simple. If there aren't
enough top-notch engineering graduates in America, we need to
help create more of them. And our top technology companies and
entrepreneurs have more than enough resources to do it.